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Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 21:50:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Cliff Addy <fbsdlist@revelstone.jvm.com>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject: mailbot wars
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I was fiddling with creating a mail autoresponder and can't see how to solve
a problem.  I was using the .forward mechanism to pipe email into a perl
script and autorespond to the sender.  It works fine, but what happens if I
receive email from a person running an autoresponder themselves?  Then my
mailbot emails a confirmation to them, their mailbot responds to me, mine to
theirs, and all hell breaks loose. 

Is there any way to avoid this situation?  I thought of putting a particular
string in the response subject, then look for it and don't respond to email
that contains it.  However, an autoresponder could respond back to me with a
generic subject, then all hell breaks loose again. 

Any and all suggestions appreciated.  Well, maybe not *all* suggestions :)

Cliff